His Past, His Regrets
by Eurwen de Vrill
Summary: Arthur finds himself being forced to relive the most painful parts of his long history by an enigmatic white rabbit, who keeps insisting that he come to terms with himself. Being a nation can be a pain sometimes. Use of human names, includes England's siblings and other countries as well.


Time had stopped.

That was the first thing he noticed when he opened his eyes, bemused to find himself sitting on a plain wooden chair set at the very center of the room. His eyes, green as the foliage of his country after rain, traveled over the clocks adorning the wall, clocks of every size and style. Each one had been frozen at a different time than the next; one read fifteen to one while another was stuck on twelve-forty. From where he was sitting, Arthur could see that every inch of the wall was decorated with clocks, all of them silent and lifeless, their faces unmoving.

The silence was deafening.

That was the second thing he noticed. He didn't crave loud noise every second of his life, as Alfred and Gilbert seemingly did – in fact, Arthur rather enjoyed the precious moments of tranquility and peace wherein he would read a book and sip some tea, relaxing his all-too-tense body. He was a nation and thus was constantly peppered by troubles, whether it be political turmoil, war, or just other nations hell-bent on irritating him to death. So, being a quiet and thoughtful man by nature, he preferred the silence most of the time. Yet… this one was unnerving, as if he were the only person left on Earth.

He was numb.

The third thing he noticed. He wasn't quite sure how to describe this state he found himself to be in, and one of the better words to do the job was _numb_. It felt as if his other emotions were being muted, everything else done away with, and he was left feeling unnaturally calm. One would usually feel the urge to stand up, move around, and make some noise to disturb the eerie silence of the strange room he found himself in, with no recollections of how he had landed there in the first place. He felt none of them. Arthur was content to sit and idly study the room he had woken up in, with no concerns of how he had made his way there.

And study the room he did. He noted mildly that if he had been his usual self, he would have promptly gone off on an explosive tirade on the atrocious design of the place. Indeed, the walls – what he could see of them, anyway – were a bright cotton candy pink, striped with a cheerful buttercup yellow. The floor was smooth and patterned with mint green and robin's egg blue tiles, forming a checkerboard look. As if the colors weren't strange enough, the clocks themselves were arranged in haphazard disarray: crooked, too close, too far apart, no apparent pattern had been followed in placing them on the wall. The clocks themselves were of every variety imaginable to man. Old wooden cuckoo clocks, brightly colored pastel ones, antique iron ones… the list went on and on.

Arthur gazed at the walls and their clocks, and said nothing.

Just sat, stared, and said nothing, merely observing. It almost seemed to him that he was patiently waiting for someone, or something, but he didn't know who.

After what seemed to be hours of waiting, his ears, accustomed to the silence by then, picked up on a faint noise coming from beyond the walls. He straightened unconsciously in his seat and gazed expectantly ahead. Soon enough, the door (he hadn't noticed the door before…) opened, and a figure stepped in.

More precisely, a white rabbit.

Arthur calmly stood from the chair and waited for the rabbit to approach him. When the animal, dressed in a neat black waistcoat and bow tie, came to a stop in front of him, he studied it briefly.

The rabbit was well-groomed, to say the least. As if the waistcoat and tie weren't enough, it held a small gold pocket watch in its paw, glancing down at it every so often. Its eyes were a dark shade of red, two large garnets peering out at him from behind tiny glasses. He could see that its fur, as white as freshly fallen snow, was soft and glossy. Nodding a little to himself, Arthur concluded that the rabbit took painstaking cares to remain presentable at all times.

"Are you satisfied?"

Somehow, Arthur wasn't surprised in the slightest to discover that the rabbit could talk. It was, after all, wearing human clothing and walking on its hind legs. How strange could talking be?

He realized that he hadn't answered, and said plainly, "Quite."

The rabbit nodded, its large ears flopping at the movement. "Good. Now, Arthur, do you know where you are?"

Arthur looked at their surroundings once more, once again not too shocked that the animal knew his name. "I would say that we are in a rather curious room," he replied a touch dryly. "But that's just me, I'm sure."

"No need to be sarcastic," the rabbit reproached him. It glanced down at the face of his watch again. "Oh, dear. Time does fly, doesn't it?"

The blond nation gestured at the clocks on the walls. "I wouldn't know; these are all broken."

"No, not broken," the rabbit disagreed, "They're not broken."

Arthur raised a brow at it. "Yes, I believe they are," he said. "The hands aren't moving, are they? They're all broken, these clocks."

The white rabbit studied his face before shaking his head. "You'll see sooner or later," it muttered – whether to itself or him, Arthur couldn't tell. "Anyway, time is running short: do you know why you are here?"

"No," the man said. "Are you going to tell me?"

Its whiskers twitch, and for a split second Arthur thought that it was amused before it spoke again. "Yes." Hopping over to a particular clock, the rabbit studied it before it said, not turning around, "You are very old, Arthur."

"Yes," he agreed. "Nations tend to be."

"Ah, but you are older than many nations, aren't you?"

Arthur didn't bother answering. Instead, he wandered over to where the rabbit stood, still observing the clock. This particular one was plain and circular, with no unique features whatsoever. It had simple black numbers and a dull brown frame, and he quickly lost interest in it. He glanced down at the rabbit next to him, wondering if it was going to continue standing there.

It didn't. Pulling out its pocket watch once more, it sighed and snapped it shut before speaking again. "As an old nation, you have a long history. Along with that history, you have many regrets. This, Arthur," it said, "is precisely the reason why you're here."

"Because I'm old?" He drew back slightly. "… Am I dying?"

To his surprise, the rabbit merely laughed. "No, no, don't be ridiculous," it chortled, waving a dainty white paw in the air dismissively. "No, you're here to relive some of your past. To see it through the eyes of a third person, come to terms with your mistakes and to also see that in several cases, you were not to blame."

"I'm always to blame," Arthur protested. "I'm Britain, and anything that went wrong in my history will always be my fault. I'm a nation, rabbit."

The rabbit said nothing, opting instead to focus his red-eyed gaze on the man. After a long pause, it sighed and reached for its glasses, wiping them on the edge of his waistcoat. "Arthur," it said thoughtfully, "sometimes, you need to remember that while you are very much a nation, you are still a person. You're Britain, yet you're Arthur Kirkland as well. I hope this will help you understand that."

Before he could question what it had just told him, the rabbit slipped its glasses back on and nodded at him. "Before we begin this process, you might want to know: it's not going to happen all in one shot." It held up a paw to stop the nation from speaking. Reluctantly, he closed his mouth. "You have a long history, as I've said, and you have many regrets too. This isn't going to take a few minutes. So, we'll break it into little pieces so as not to overwhelm you; as you know too well, history can be painful."

Arthur couldn't agree more.

The rabbit glanced at its watch one last time before snapping it shut and slipping it into his pocket. "You also might want to know," it informed him amiably, "that in the real world, as you may put it, you are currently unconscious from fainting. Don't worry," it added hastily, seeing his expression, "no one knows this except for your siblings. It appears that they had decided to visit you." Ignoring the nation's groan and dark mutterings, the rabbit looked about and began hopping back toward the door, calling back, "Until next time, Arthur."

The blond noticed with a jolt that his vision was becoming foggy, the room distorting and the white rabbit just a shadow in his eyes. "Wait," he shouted, tongue feeling heavy. "You never told me, but what is this place?"

He struggled to keep his eyes open as the animal's answer floated over to him. "Why," it exclaimed, "this is your sub consciousness, of course! Where else could it be?"

Arthur opened his mouth sluggishly to retort, when finally his eyelids closed, and everything faded.


End file.
